WHILE you might not think your shack is worthy of historical preservation, it may well be.
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Tasmanians with humble fibro shacks, often cheaply and crudely constructed from offcuts of the family home or recycled tip material, may one day find themselves blocked from replacing them with modern homes if they become heritage listed.
A National Trust of Australia report last week recommended hundreds of squatter shacks built on the West Australian coast be preserved for their social and historical value.
These shacks, on Crown land on Wedge Island and at Grey, were built between the 1950s and 1980s.
The recommendation follows a state parliamentary committee recommendation in 2010 that the shacks be torn down.
A push to heritage list 140 shacks in Caloundra, Queensland, started in August.
Just one Tasmanian shack community is heritage-protected, with Lettes Bay shacks on the West Coast entered into Tasmania's Heritage Register in March 2011.
The shacks were built between 1920 and 1950.
Tasmanian Heritage Council chairwoman Dianne Snowden said Lettes Bay was heritage listed because it demonstrated a particular aspect of Tasmania's social and recreational history and met several of the criteria specified in the state's Historic Cultural Heritage Act.
"For any shack or shack community to be entered in the Tasmanian Heritage Register they would need to meet at least one of the criterion specified in the Historic Cultural Heritage Act 1995," she said.
The shack would need to:
Demonstrate either its part in the evolution of Tasmania's history or contribute to an understanding of state history.
Demonstrate a rare or high degree of creative or technical achievement, hold special community, societal or cultural meaning.
Have a special association with the life or work of a person who was important in Tasmania's history.
A heritage listing does not require a shackowner's permission, though a Heritage Council spokeswoman said the council endeavoured to consult with owners.
Binalong Bay started as a shack community and has since grown into an idyllic residential spot.
Until a few years ago, four of Binalong Bay's oldest shacks could be seen at the gulch.
Two were removed by Crown Land Services during a long- running statewide determination of all shacks on Crown land which started in the late 1990s.
Shacks were removed if they could not meet a range of structural, geological or living requirements to transfer them to private titles or long-term leases.
Binalong Bay historian Garry Richardson is part of a group fighting to have the remaining two preserved.
He said the Binalong Bay Ratepayers Association first wrote to the National Heritage Trust in 1995 to have the village's foreshore shacks retained for historical significance but the request was rejected.